Chapter Two Hundred and Twenty Eight - 228The Arcid screamed in unwilling rage, but Felix didn't care. Felix's Will was iron, and the Arcid broke itself against him. Mana and Essence tore from the Sphere, its Body and Mind and Spirit all draining into Felix's bottomless Hunger.
"You...Those are...mine," it rasped.
"No," Before its eyes flickered out, Felix met them and twisted his arm deeper into its chest. "They're mine."
The world around them, the battle that raged, all of it faded to gray and rippled away. Felix didn't hesitate, he knew how it worked now and he'd grown better at it. Grey became black Void before, with a single piercing note the Void shattered into the coiling Memories of the Arcid.
A universe of Arcids exploded in that Memory space, an eternally spreading centipede of spherical golems. Among them all were vibrations, strains he had never before heard. But Felix knew what it meant. It all suddenly made perfect sense. Connections. It's all Connections.
Felix knew what he needed to find.
He shaped his Will, his Intent, flexing his Affinity to hear the telltale shimmers of resonating connection. It was the loudest strand, for obvious reasons. However twisted the relationship, what could be greater than the connection between parent and child?
Felix seized it and swallowed the rest whole.
You Have Taken A Memory From Arcid Number 55390!
View Memory Now?
Y/Y
Yes.
The Memory swept him away.
Rory pulled back his sword, the wet heat of the Simian following it's blade as its body collapsed. Now that the furry bastard was out of his sight, he could see the trail of devastation Felix had left on the battlefield. The monsters were in disarray, and he had just taken down their massive leader. Rory grinned through his bloodied beard.
The next second, however, a wave of red-gold energy thrummed through the ground. It shone from beneath the cobbles, passing by the monsters without singeing a strand of fur, yet when it hit their wall the sigils around Rory flared into a blinding radiance. Even his Endurance couldn't handle the light, and wiggling afterimages dominated his vision for a precious few seconds. He couldn't see anything, but he hadn't Tempered some third-class Mind. Based off their positions seconds ago, Rory lashed outward in a flurry of offense that caught furred flesh with axe and blade. Kill notifications flickered past him, but he dismissed them out of hand.
"Hector! What's happening?" Rory screamed, his vision clearing enough to make out the Inscriptionist. The man was hunched behind a redoubt, frantically inscribing new sigils along the battlements. Rory could make out the man's face, and it was drawn and haggard.
"Th-the wards! All of them! All of them!" He practically howled the last, shoving his stylus forward as glyphs and sigils formed beneath him with unerring tenacity. "Mana is draining out of the arrays! Something is draining them all! It's sabotage!"
The translucent bulwarks around the battlements flickered and faded as the last of the Mana drained away, leaving the sigils dull and inert. Rory's senses flared in panic and he dove for his friend. "Get down!"
A string of spectral fireballs detonated atop the wall, and the Dwarf was thrown bodily from them as if he'd been hit by a giant's backhand. In a moment outside time, Rory briefly saw the other defenders tossed from the wall, and Hector hung limply in his grip.
Don't die on me, lad! Siva's Blessing!
Pink light welled beneath his fingers and sunk into the Inscriptionist, just as the two of them hit the ground hard.
"UNF!"
Rory landed on his back, hoping to cushion the more fragile Hector. He ended up squashed between his armor, the ground, and Hector's full grown Human weight. He wheezed a breath, his Body more than enough to put up with the punishment but it did nothing for the pain. Above he saw a swarm of Lesser Wretches buzz up and over the neutered walls, their wings easily carrying them into the emptied courtyard.
"Blind gods, this day doesn't quit, does it?" Rory rolled Hector off of him and reached for his weapons. He had lost the shortsword he'd been using on the battlements, but he was practically bristling with options. A handaxe and another shortsword found their way into his hands. Thunder crackled, far above. "Ye picked the wrong camp, beasties."
Charge of the Undermount!
Earth Mana welled beneath Rory's feet as he ran, each step propelled further as the ground strengthened him. The nearest Wretch turned toward him, but the Dwarf was on it before it could bring it's claws to bear. Three entire legs sheared off at the joint before it engaged him, and Rory's casual toss of a throwing dagger blew a span-sized hole in its armored abdomen. Mana and Stamina surged in his Body, his veins and channels chugging with a fiery cocktail of adrenaline and a potent, Weaving Stage core.
You Have Killed A Lesser Wretch!
XP Earned!
One down, Rory huffed and looked at the field. Too many to go.
More Wretches came over the walls as he watched, more than he could handle alone. Pockets of resistance were forming, but the fighters were scattered and injured from their various falls. People were dying right in front of him, and Rory couldn't help them. It about drove him mad.
*KRRAAUUSH!*
A section of the wall exploded inward, raining shrapnel on them all. Rory dove behind his recent kill, but saw his Health drop twenty points from the needle-sharp chunks of stone. A huge Wretch waded through the gap, rocks still falling from its huge scythe claws. One of the Greater Wretches. Behind it, a flood of Ghostfire Simians rushed in, streaming beneath its dagger-like feet.
We can't hold. Not here. Rory swept his eyes around the field, rushing to Hector's side and leveraging the unconscious man to his feet. We have to
The monkeys and bugs all but ignored the defenders, heading directly to the reinforced warehouses and healing ward. Where the sick still remained, the ones hurt by the emerging Primordial energy. They'd never stood up again, despite the energy disappearing from the city. They were defenseless!
No! Damn it!
Scintillating Spanner!
He ran, the axe in his hand welling with a flux of Mana vapor. It began to shake so hard he could barely hold it. Rory cut down another Lesser Wretch, but kept running. As the vapor began spewing outward, he hurled his axe. The weapon arced outward and exploded in a bright white light laced with greens and blues. It hit the Simians hard, knocking many of them off their feet, but he couldn't stop them all.
He couldn't stop them all.
Felix was in the Archon's Domain, and somehow he knew this Memory was from months ago. He recognized the tilted halls and smoldering heat, though not the room he resided within. It was a vast chamber, fueled by waterfalls of vivid magma and studded with elaborate black metal machines.
Lava forges, he suddenly knew, having pulled the word from the Memory itself. Screaming Frost Giants were all around him, hauled upright on black iron hooks and chains by twisted amalgamations of that very same black iron and belching furnaces. Crude Arcid precurors, he knew, clearly created to build better versions of themselves.
With the Risi as the base.
A faint thread of sympathy pulsed in Felix, but he ignored it. They shared a lingering connection for his part in their demise, but he didn't regret his actions. Grimmar and his ilk were monsters, through and through.
Stronger by far, however, was the Maw's own connection to them. It was gone, but he knew he'd somehow taken over parts of whatever the Maw had been, and to the Risi the Maw was a god. The Risi he passed seemed to look right at him, but they don't see Felix. Not really.
"Mother...Mother please..."
The whispers continued, unabated. Pleas for mercy, for salvation. Hissed warnings of what they knew, what they dared to hear. Felix heard it all, pouring through him and leaving foul trails behind. The Archon, what it planned, what it was doing. The Risi were being torn apart, and he'd already seen the result.
Arcids and the Reforged. Despite their contentious history, despite his desire to feel nothing, that sympathy roused in him again. Damn it.
At the far end of the chamber, a fifty foot tall door opened with a mighty boom. Fear coursed through all those around him as a towering figure in golden armor stomped into the chamber. He was speaking to a much smaller Arcid who carried a clipboard, of all things.
"Yes, Master," it marked something on its clipboard. "That is what I have seen. The Bloodmoon comes apace, we have but to infuse them with the necessary tinctures as the reforging commences. Your garden has all we need. I"
"Silence."
Felix froze just as the Arcid, for the Archon's huge, golden finger stabbed out. It pointed directly at him, and the golden giant's facehelmet though it wascontorted in revulsion.